We have now begun the season of Advent. It marks the start of a new liturgical year in the Church. The season of Advent also serves to focus our spiritual attention on the short time that we have in this world.

Advent reminds us of the tenuousness of our plans in this life and the importance of our every thought, word and action for the world to come. All of that because the reminder and message is clear. The Son of God has come among us and He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

The readings of the Sunday Masses during Advent are filled with the admonition we read last Sunday. “Stay awake! At an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Mt 24:42, 44). Each of us must be ready and we must help each other to be prepared as well for the coming again of Jesus in glory.

This need to prepare and to live our lives as Christ wants is highlighted in the figure of St. John the Baptist. He is, of course, a very prominent figure in the Gospels, helping the people of Israel in their final preparations to meet the long-promised Savior.

We are told that, attracted both by John’s words and by his simple way of life, people flocked to him and listened to what we so desperately need in our modern society. That is, the call to conversion of our hearts and our lives. In fact, the Gospel of Luke recounts that common folks, the dreaded tax collectors and even the Roman soldiers responded to John’s call by asking him, “What should we do?” (Lk. 3).

Their question is vitally important and it should be ours today as well. In asking John the Baptist, “What should we do to prepare for Christ?” they acknowledged the first great reality. They were not yet ready to meet Jesus. Their lives were not yet in order as they
should be.

It means that they recognized both that they were sinners and that their love for God and their charity still needed to be deepened.

Their question also recognized that God has told us how He wants us to live. But we need the witness of human instruments, be it John the Baptist, or, in our time, the teaching of our Catholic faith. That is why we ask God’s instruments, “What should we do?”

In our secularized society, the great temptation is to take our eyes and our hearts off of Jesus Christ. In that case, there arises doubt or even a lack of concern that He has come once into the world. And attention then is focused on the here and now, on distractions and comforts of this world.

If we have any doubt, we need only watch the heavy pre-Christmas advertising for largely unnecessary material goods that obscures the very reason for Christmas, the birth of Jesus.

So we would do well to join our voices to those who came to John the Baptist in the desert. And during this Advent season we too might ask to our Catholic faith and to the Church, “What should we do?”

The first response is the simplest but also the deepest. Pray. Talk to Christ with your own personal prayer life. If you don’t already, then begin this Advent.

Next we need to live the continuation of the Year of Mercy that has just concluded. To encounter God’s mercy we need first to repent and convert our lives, especially our moral lives.

Are we living some element of sin? Might it be some anger, hurt or hatred that we are hanging on to? Be done with it.

Are we in a sinful relationship? Does our marriage need to come to the Church? Now is the acceptable time!

What else should we do? If we have converted and changed our heart and our life, we must then sincerely seek forgiveness. Don’t let Advent pass and Christmas come without going to confession. Receive the forgiveness of Jesus through the priest. If it has been a long time, all the more reason to come now.

And of course, as always, we must be mindful of the poor. What have we done lately to help them in their need?

“What should we do?”

The answer is that we must change. We must recognize our sins and repent of them. We must do more and greater good in this life. And then we wait with patience, joy and with hope.

Because He has come. And He will come again.